DON'T GO INTO THE VOLCANO

A dream honeymoon hike to the rim of a jungle crater nds with a terrible fall. Now a young bride must get her severely injured husband medical care—by herself

- Nicholas Hune-Brown

IN A STEAMY morning in July last year, Clay and Acaimie (pronounced ‘Ah-CAY-mee’) Chastain arrived at the base of Mount Liamuiga on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, ready for their first climb as husband and wife. They had married just five days earlier back home in Crawfordsville, Indiana—the culmination of a storybook romance. Clay, 23, and Acaimie, 25, had met at Purdue University, at a square dance held for Clay’s Christian fraternity and Acaimie’s Christian sorority. Clay—a handsome farmer’s son with a charming, puppy-dog energy— was immediately smitten by Acaimie’s beguiling smile. They’d lasted through college and the tough years after, when Acaimie moved to Illinois for work as a store manager and Clay finished his master’s degree in swine nutrition back at Purdue. They took turns enduring the weekly five-hour drives to see each other, but they were devoted and slightly old-fashioned—they refused to live together in the house they’d bought together in Indianapolis until after their wedding.

Like any good couple, they had their complementary differences. Acaimie had always been the worrier. “A realist,” she says. “A pessimist,” Clay replies. She liked order and structure. She wasn’t just fastidious about washing her sheets once a week; she did it at the same time every Saturday. Clay, on the other hand, was a perpetual optimist—maddeningly carefree and easygoing, always certain that things would turn out just fine.

So it was Clay who wanted to take a day of their Caribbean honeymoon and spend it scaling Mount Lia muiga.